Independence is a grand thing but too many folks around the Fourth of July mindlessly celebrate by drinking, blowing things up and watching Will Smith movies without remembering from what they happen to be independent. No, I don’t mean The Redcoats. The British are not coming back and it’s time to lay down those arms. No I mean a generality of being without dependence as an individual. I mean more along the lines of the definition from the Oxford English Dictionary:

independent

• adjective 1 free from outside control or influence. 2 (of a country) self governing. 3 not depending on another for livelihood or subsistence. 4 not connected with another; separate. 5 (of broadcasting, a school, etc.) not supported by public funds.

On the Fourth of July 2007 I celebrated my own personal lack of outside controlling influence by not buying a Dunkin’ Coolata, watching TV or going to see the Transformers Movie. I proved myself self-governing by deciding to sleep in and not take a shower until mid afternoon. I depend not upon another for livelihood! (I made my own ball-park franks & “peace, pasta & parmesan” mac & cheese) I may be connected to my wife, but we did our own thing almost all day. We even have our own separate cats. Oh, and though I did enjoy the benefits of some public fun I do not enjoy the benefits of any public funds.

I think for myself, feel my own emotions & do not buy into propaganda. I pay my taxes, vote my conscience & hate how all the fireworks I heard yesterday were made in China. I’m proud that an American is once again the hot-dog-eating-champ but sad that comic book writers killed Captain America and the final Sopranos episode was filled with thinly veiled political rhetoric.

It seems lots of folks have lost their pride in America. Maybe I just have too much faith or maybe I can’t let go of the dream because my name is right there in the middle of the word America for goodness sake. Whatever the reason I hold out hope that more Independents will emerge. They’ll turn off The News, crack a book and think for themselves. They’ll see the big picture. They’ll run for office. They’ll win. Congress will be filled with Independent Thinkers and a new square peg who just doesn’t fit into the old system will toil in the oval office every four years.

But that’s a ways away… first things first! Before you can take pride in your country, start by taking pride in your back yard, your children & most importantly: yourself. See yourself independently of how others tell you how you are supposed to look. Work independently of the limitations others have prescribed for you. Think independently of the groupthink others have thought for you. Be your own person for God’s sake! Or, failing that, be your own God for man’s sake. Have pride in yourself and everything else starts to fall in line like so many ducks in a row at a Cheney family reunion. Start now and by this holiday next year you too can celebrate Independent’s day and nobody will ever be able to take that away from you.

My wife just attacked me with a mud mask. Here I sat ready to type out a blog about human nature and mountains when she slides up and starts smearing “warming” mud on my cheek. Then my chin. Next thing I know it’s EVERYWHERE and she says it’s detoxifying and I say it’s smelly.

What have I become.

I just had a look at myself in the mirror and I feel a little better. It just looks like I’m smeared over with vasoline. Not that being covered in vasoline makes me feel more masculine, but at least I don’t look like I’m supposed to be in a spa commercial. Yaurgh. I’d rather have coins on my eyes than cucumbers.

Ok, so anyway… as I’ve been Geocaching all over the state the past few weeks a pattern emerged that I had been noticing subconsciously my entire life….

Every time I crested a hill and found a nice high place with a view… I also found a fire ring. At first I wondered about the paleolithic remnant of our brains that insists that mountains need fire. Then I realized that even Mountain Men like to enjoy the view now and again, but male bonding isn’t possible without Beer or Fire or – better yet – Beer AND Fire. Then I reflected on the Mountain Boys who had been up here recently and had the same problem but instead of two guys toting a faggot of firewood up the hill, these two boys carried spray paint and wrote “faggot” on the rocks. I can only assume this was in brash defiance of the feeling that “if my friend’s hand brushes mine one more time I’m going to grab it and if he doesn’t pull away I’ll squeeze his hand tight in mine for the rest of my life”…

My mind tends to wonder while I wander.

Of course the truth of the fire-rings has nothing to do with human nature.

That is where the space ships land. Obviously.

Is that an irate Washington or what? I would just like to point out a travesty that will befall our country in 2012. I mean besides the end of days thanks to the Mayan Calendar! I’m referring to the new dollar coins being stamped out at the US Mint. I don’t have anything against the mint trying to make a mint by making me try to “be the first kid on your block to collect them all!” but I do have a problem with them elevating Cleveland to “Super Grover!”. You see it went like this: President Cleveland lost to Benji Harrison (Defeated by the electoral college!) after only one term. Then Harrison screwed up, lost the support of this party & was defeated by the best foot the Mugwumps could put forward: Super Grover, presidential retred! This made Grover Cleveland the 22nd president & allowed him to claim the 22nd & 24th presidency. Note the difference between President & Presidency here folks.

Slash forward 120 years & congress has decided to put all of the presidents on the coins. The trouble is that despite Congress making a special provision for the “REDESIGN AND ISSUANCE OF CIRCULATING $1 COINS HONORING EACH OF THE PRESIDENTS OF THE UNITED STATES” they’ve gone & done pissed off George Washington, Abe Lincoln & even Franklin Pierce by giving Grover Cleveland TWO, count them again, TWO full sets of coins! Are we commemorating the Presidents or Terms of Presidencies? Are they really stating that Cleveland was two unique people capable of being two presidents? Is there precedence?

Way back in the days when A Renaissance Faire was just called “A Faire”, King Henry The Sixth was succeeded by Edward the Fourth by some nasty business. Then the comeback music started & Henry The Sixth took back his throne becoming… Henry The Seventh? Of course not! We wouldn’t see one of those for another 15 years. Grover is simply El Presidente the 22nd & nothing more. It simply boggles the mind that a guy who lost the popular vote, slipped in anyway & then went on to become a One Termer not once, but twice is going to have double the number of coins in circulation as Adams, Roosevelt & Bush. Well, bad examples by name there, but you get the idea.

This cannot be allowed to go unnoticed! I say this good people: In the year 2012 – do not, under any circumstances accept a Super Grover coin! If it has the number 24 on it, refuse it as you would a pine nickel! This is a man who had his sister for the First Lady (Look it up!) then married a woman 26 years younger than himself! Ok, that’s actually pretty cool, but he never even earned a collegiate degree. Yes, he’s one of our Presidents, but in the end he was just another Lawyer from New Jersey.

Linky’s!
Presidential Coin Release Schedule
Benjamin Harrison Bio
Grover Cleveland Bio

Bag O’ Crap!

There’s a fun little shopping website called woot.com that sells exactly one item per day. That one item is usually tech related & always cheap. The irreverent nature of the site, as much as the sale prices, is what attracts many of the sites loyal (ok, rabid) fans. Amusing sales pitches, pod-casts & weekly contests add to the fun. Imagine a K-Mart Blue-Light-Special with a singing carnival barker salesman & hundreds of shoppers poking fun at (or extolling the virtues of) the merchandise.

They also sell bags of crap.

I don’t know where the idea came from, but it’s genius. Woot.com takes a bunch of stuff they couldn’t possibly sell, dumps it into a brown paper bag (or box for shipping) and sells it for a buck and people go insane trying to get one. Sure, they throw in a few big-ticket jackpots (TVs, X-Boxes, Etc) but the real pay-off is simply the bragging rights of having bought a B.O.C.

Once in a blue moon they’ll sell a BOC as their daily sale and it’s sold out within minutes. This means that I have to stay up until 2 AM EST to catch the new sale as it comes online at midnight Texas time. The other way to earn a BOC is to catch it as it comes around during a Woot-Off. A Woot-Off is when they sell many many items, one at a time until they sell out, at prices discounted even further than normal. Woot-offs typically last a day or two and the items change every few minutes as they sell out. Somewhere in the midst of this melee of might appear the coveted Random Crap.

Watching the recent Woot-off in November I hit refresh as the previous item sold out and was greeted with the link above and the image at the left. I just managed to get the order in as their servers got hammered to death. Today my BOC arrived in the mail courtesy of Jesus the Fedex guy. Jesus, you’re my homey!

Without further delay, here are the contents of my very own personal Bag of Crap! Click the images to make them BIGGER.

The first thing I noticed was a neat compact wireless mouse. Now I can control my Livingroom Media PC from the comfort of my couch! Batteries included, this is worth the $6 by itself.

Next I pulled out the once-famouse CueCat. Around the turn of the century it was dreamed of as a way to avoid using search engines by scanning bar-codes off of magazines, books, TV, etc. The internet bust took this cool cat down with it unfortunately. Read more at the link below. The technology eventually made it’s way into webcams & my friend Ethan was lucky enough to actually have one.

Finally, I plucked forth a Samsonite camera bag/fanny pack. It has many pockets, a strap, handle & ample storage for all my digital camera gear! Wish I hadn’t just bought a camera bag though. 🙂

Collected Links:


Reported Bag-o-Crap Contents
Woot.com’s Wikipedia Entry
Original CueCat link
Dissecting the CueCat

So I woke up this morning having set (most of) the clocks back an hour for the switch back to Daylight Standard Time (IE, the time the rest of the world has been using since the first person noticed that the sun comes and goes on a kind of a pattern). The first thing I noticed was that the two alarm clocks in the bedroom (His/Hers) read 7:10 & 6:10 respectively. These two clocks claim to be Atomic Clock Radio Signal Receiving Clocks that never need setting as they glean the magic of time from radio signals and set themselves. That’s great except (as we learned last year) hers, when resetting to DST also resets the timezone to the default central time zone, so it was actually 7:10 not 6:10 and she was an hour late. To complicate matters, Verizon Wireless in it’s infinite wisdom, hadn’t yet changed back so they said 8:10 making her an hour early. Heather acknowledges that I’ve taken over the clock setting/maintaining job in the household. I pride myself on be punctual. This is an unrealistic self-image though as I’m only actually punctual about half the time even though I have a clock (or two or three) in every room to make certain I know what time it is. At one time I even made a study of how far people set their clocks ahead. It was called The Dalton Difference. So you can guess that it’s extremely frustrating that I DON’T KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS! Adding to the fun, there is the “Energy Policy Act of 2005″ that extends Daylight Saving Time by two weeks. OMG! Does that go into effect this year? Was the news lady on the radio wrong and only Verizon correct? To set matters straight I did what any red blooded American would do. I hit the internet and checked both CNN & FoxNews. If THEY agree then it must be true. I learned that we did “Fall Back” an hour at 2 AM this morning and it is indeed 7:10. Besides Heather being late for her class (yeah, on a Sunday. That’s continuing education for ya.) it was crucial that I knew just what time it was because if I turned on the TV this afternoon and found out that I missed an hour of Football, I’d have to be quite upset. Now, to go and finish setting all of the clocks:

Kitchen Clock – Atomic. Sets itself (and is used as the reference point for all other clocks in the household)
Rice Cooker clock – for setting the timer.
Microwave clock – for knowing how long your forgotten quiche has been sitting in there. Stereo clock – It has a display so they felt the need to add a clock.
VCR clock – For timed recordings. It doesn’t even display, but it’s in there!
DVD player clock – Again for timed recordings, but this one does display.
Luxury Bathroom clock – So Heather knows how early she is in the morning.
Utility Bathroom clock – So Eric knows how late he is in the morning.
Nightstand 1 clock – Heather’s with the broken time zone.
Nightstand 2 clock – Eric’s with the “atomic” featured turned off so to be correctly in sync with other atomic clocks.
Wrist watch clock – *NIU, needs batteries.
Four PC clocks – Set themselves back an hour automatically based on this being the last Sunday in October. What will happen NEXT year?
Den clock – Tells me it’s friggin’ late and I need to get off of the computer and go to bed.
Lock Haven University Mantle clock – Sits in the den under my diploma and chimes on the hour.
Poptarts Gag Alarm clock – Don’t send in your box tops for this clock. The hour hand doesn’t spin so I really don’t know what time it is!
Aquarium Timer
My Car clock – Which I have to look up in the owners manual to figure out how to change twice a year. So sad.
Heather’s Car clock – Which will be correct again if we just wait until March.
Embedded clocks – these are the more annoying ones because you might not remember to get them all until months go by and you’re really tempted to just wait until the next switch when they’ll be right again. These include, but are not limited to: My MP3 Player, iPod, Digital Camera, Heather’s Not -digital Camera, Video Camera, Cable Modem, Router, Printer, Portable-Stereo, Portable-CD Player, Walkman, Stop Watch, Handheld Games, Calculator, Organizer, Spell-checker and both Pedometers.

That’s it. I’m going back to bed and not setting an alarm because I don’t think the clock knows what time it is either.

UPDATE!
11/2/06 – We had a power outage last night and now I have to set half of the clocks all over again. Hooray!

Obligatory Links:
Explanation from the US Government concerning Daylight Saving Time
Ok, so what time is it?
A less US-Centric What-time-is-it link

Greenwich Mean Time

When some grooms would be running around getting doing last minute stuff or being social butterflies to cover the stomach butterflies I spent much of my free time the week before the big pig-roast wedding reception sitting in front of my computer pouring through my music catalogues, downloading & editing stuff I didn’t have & compiling playlists. The end result was three full CDs split up into Music for to Mingle, Slow Beats for Eats, and Dance Dance Reception. There was also a fourth CD with special songs that we could whip out on request like the Electric Slide or Hokey-Pokey. I threw on a few extra dance songs in case the party ran over (I not so secretly hoped it would). I timed the songs to coincide with when we wanted to have our ceremony, when the food would be served etc & nearly everything cue went off without a hitch. Beauty!

Some back story on our wedding song: Several months ago when Heather & I decided to get married we knew we would need a song & when nothing immediately sprang to mind I queued up all of the songs in my musical collection, hit the Random button and let it play. With over 14 Thousand tracks to choose from the computer, in its infinite wisdom chose… “Stairway to Heaven”. We wouldn’t be the first to use it in a wedding, but… no thanks. We ended up choosing”Road to Nowhere” by the Talking Heads not so much for the lyrics (see below), but for the bouncy fun of it all. This road that we are on is going nowhere, but we’re on the road and we are going t enjoy the scenery, the ups, the downs & most off all, the bumperstickers along the way. I’m feelin’ Ok this morning & you know, we’re on a road to paradise, here we go… here we go.

To be honest , my favorite part of the editing process was going through all of the songs that didn’t make the cut, were really inappropriate for a wedding or are just to cheesy to actually use… and splicing them into one long montage of musical mayhem. Just for fun, I added extra cow-bell to several of the songs and overlaid the famous “Mawidge!” audio from the Princess Bride. Wanna guess what song I chose to mix with the movie audio? Why, Stairway to Heaven of course! Take a listen… without fear of lawsuit, I now brazenly post several seconds of a dozen or so songs mixed together with fun sound bytes. Enjoy!

Click to listen to or download Eric & Heather’s Rejected Wedding Songs Medley!

“Road to Nowhere” – Talking Heads – From their 1987 Album “Little Creatures” (We used the version from their greatest hits album “Sand in the Vasoline”)

WELL WE KNOW WHERE WE’RE GOIN’
BUT WE DON’T KNOW WHERE WE’VE BEEN
AND WE KNOW WHAT WE’RE KNOWIN’

BUT WE CAN’T SAY WHAT WE’VE SEEN
AND WE’RE NOT LITTLE CHILDREN
AND WE KNOW WHAT WE WANT
AND THE FUTURE IS CERTAIN
GIVE US TIME TO WORK IT OUT

We’re on a road to nowhere
Come on inside
Takin’ that ride to nowhere

We’ll take that ride

I’m feelin’ okay this mornin’
And you know,
We’re on the road to paradise
Here we go, here we go.

We’re on a ride to nowhere
Come on inside.
Takin’ that ride to nowhere

We’ll take that ride.

Maybe you wonder where you are
I don’t care
Here is where time is on our side
Take you there…take you there.

We’re on a road to nowhere (Heh! Ha!)
We’re on a road to nowhere (Ha! Ha!)
We’re on a road to nowhere (Ha! Hah! Wooo!)

There’s a city in my mind
Come along and take that ride

and it’s all right, baby, it’s all right.

And it’s very far away
But it’s growing day by day
And it’s all right, baby, it’s all right.

Would you like to come along

To help me sing this song

And it’s all right, baby, it’s all right.

They can tell you what to do
But they’ll make a fool of you
And it’s all right, baby, it’s all right.

[repeat last 4 stanzas, with feeling]

We’re on a road to nowhere (Hey!)
We’re on a road to nowhere (Heeeaaaah!)
We’re on a road to nowhere (HAAAAH! HAAAAAAH!)

We’re on a road to nowhere….